State Fairs are often an afterthought. A relic of times past when most of us lived in rural areas and guessing the weight of a pumpkin was the best entertainment of the month. They offer variations on the same rides, foods and entertainment that you find at your local Memorial Day Carnival or County Fair and, I mean, how many people even go to those? But the Minnesota State Fair is so far from an afterthought that it seems to be on the minds of Minnesotans for the 50 weeks of the year in which it is not in operation. Plans are made, new foods are devised and longed after; then, just like that, it’s over again. This year, however, the Unvegan paid a visit to see how it would all stack up.

Swedish Meatball Smorgas – The Blue Barn

It’s not all about gluttony. Sometimes it’s just about doing something no one ever thought of. Like putting Swedish meatballs on a roll, pouring white gravy all over them and then topping them with lingonberry jam and dill pickles. I was smart enough to order without the pickles and it paid off in pure sweet, salty and savory deliciousness.

Mangonada Shave Ice – Minnesnowii Shave Ice

You wouldn’t think Minnesotans would be fans of shave ice since they live among it for so much of the year. Yet, the Mangonada is real and it is fascinating. Packed with mango syrup, drizzles of chamoy sauce, popping boba (for some inexplicably genius reason), spicy tajin powder and a tamarind straw (for some inexplicably strange reason). The straw was useless, but the rest of this was somehow light, refreshing, hearty and spicy at once. And with all that, it just somehow worked.

Giant Juicy Turkey Sandwich – Turkey To Go

Being a first timer, I couldn’t just go with new stuff. And, frankly, I wasn’t too excited about getting a turkey sandwich. But, my buddy told me it was well worth it and, well, it sure was. I added bacon and a sweet glaze to mine and it was unbelievably juicy for what’s generally the driest fowl of all. As I drove past many a wild turkey in the Northwoods, all I could think about was how juicy they could be in sandwich form.

Blu – Grain Belt

I love blueberries and I love beer. It makes sense that I would like a blueberry beer, right? Wrong. It seems to be that the special beers at the Minnesota State Fair are pretty much all sweet, but this took that sweetness way beyond balance and into juice territory. Good thing I had all kinds of savory and salty foods to counter that sweetness (and don’t worry, I still drank the whole damn thing).

Gizmo – Carl’s

The Gizmo is another classic, and yet it is churned out by pretty much the most nondescript cart in the whole fair. Sometimes you just know you’re good and it’s hard to go bad when you are an Italian roll filled with ground beef, Italian sausage, red sauce and a layer of melted mozzarella cheese to seal all of the goodness in.

Sweet Greek Cheese Puffs – Dino’s Gyros

Ricotta and Feta. Flaky phyllo dough. Powdered sugar. More than a drizzle of honey. I am a many who loves his sweet and salty combos and these Sweet Greek Cheese Puffs did more than satisfy that craving. It may have gotten a but too sweet toward the end when the honey congregated in the corner with the remaining puff, but these were a treat.

Zesty PB&J Sausage – Gass Station Grill

It doesn’t sound right. Nope, not at all. But if you’ve been paying attention to burger places lately, mixing peanut butter, jelly and some sort of spiciness is all the rage. It’s only natural that it made its way into a tube steak. While each bite may have been somewhat inconsistent, there is no doubt that this works. If they can get that peanut buttery and jelly-y goodness more evenly distributed, this sausage could take over the world.

Turducken Sausage – Giggles’ Campfire Grill

Not all sausages are created equal. Or is it something about the size of the sausage versus what you do with it? Regardless, the Turducken sausage didn’t just lose the battle of the sausages, it barely seemed to fight. It was too tightly packed, the grind seemed off and really all I could taste was the turkey, with maybe a touch of chicken. Perhaps in years past this may have flown, but in the world of the Zesty PB&J sausage you have to be oh so much better than this.

Passion Fruit Pilsner – Bent Paddle Brewing

Duluth is a cool city. And it sent a pretty cool beer down to the state fair. It’s not a sour per se, but does it’s best to harness the tartness of passion fruit and churns out a pretty unique pilsner that is not too sweet and not too sour. It’s not just right either, but it’s good enough to make the drinking enjoyable.

Bacon-Wrapped Pork Belly – The Hangar

You don’t go to the state fair looking to eat a balanced meal. But nowhere is that lack of balance more exemplified than in this pork on pork action on a stick. It was so unbelievably juicy, smokey and salty forcing the use of dozens of napkins lest your face runneth with juices that would later congeal into something resembling a wax museum. While this may be perfection in meat form, the critic in me did wish there was some sort of a sweet and acidic dipping sauce like apple cider vinaigrette or a cherry reduction to accompany this meaty concoction. Despite that, the universe seemed to pause in recognition of the beauty of each bite of this masterpiece.

Fried Cheese Curds – Everywhere

Some day I’d like to pull an Andrew Zimmern and try every cheese curd purveyor at the fair. Until that day, I am a satisfied man as long as the place knows to stick with the white variety of cheddar, to fry them just right amount of time to maintain the squeakiness and to only lightly batter them lest the batter overpower the cheese. It’s not the tallest order, but it’s not the easiest one to fulfill either. Plus, when you’re coming from Arizona all cheese curds are good cheese curds.

Whelp. That’s a wrap. The pilgrimage is complete. Now if only I can figure out a way to make this an annual thing…or at least get to Iowa somehow…

Sometimes you find yourself walking around the streets of Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) late at night trying to find a restaurant that tourists wouldn’t go to. What we found was Le La Quan, a place so local that the people who worked in the restaurant barely spoke a word of English and the menu was only available in Vietnamese.

Yet, through it all we managed to place some orders. While I was really only there for a beer, one of my companions ordered some chicken. But not just any chicken – chicken ovaries. I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to eat these, so I dug in.

The first thing you notice is that they look like Satan’s egg yolks. In that I mean they were yellow, but veiny in an intimidating way. Yet, I dug in and found that it was more like a combination of hard boiled egg yolk and egg white in one. It had the flavor of egg yolk, but was much more rubbery in texture. And yet still not quite as rubbery as egg whites.

Of course, I probably could have guessed that chicken ovaries would taste a lot like chicken “pre-eggs,” but you never know until you try and now that I’ve tried, you probably don’t have to.

On the way into Taste of the Himalayas in La Jolla, a patron on the way out told us that we had to get the tandoori chicken tikka. There was a strong scent of smoke in the place, which had clearly turned off its smoke detectors a long time ago, and we figured this departing patron must have known what she was talking about.

Thus, we began with the tandoori chicken tikka. It arrived like a plate of fajitas – steaming up the place to accompany the smoke. The chicken was good, although not exactly something I would declare every stranger walking through the door should order.

We also ordered a little something called Momo, which are a part of why this restaurant is called Taste of the Himalayas and not Taste of India. That’s because momo are Tibetan specialty (that have spread throughout South Asia). They are steamed dumplings that are generally filled with whatever is available. In this case, since we don’t live in the Himalayas and have choices, we opted for the chicken variety. They came with a “Himalayan” sauce that was pretty good and while I enjoyed the dumplings, our resident South Asian expert at the table let us know that they weren’t anything special.

As for my main course, I went with the Chicken Korma, because that is generally my favorite Indian dish. Taste of the Himalayas served it up pretty solidly.

Ultimately, Taste of the Himalayas churned out a solid meal. None of the dishes stood out to me in particular, but they were far from being bad. If you’re in La Jolla looking for Himalayan food, Taste of the Himalayas will do. But I wouldn’t exactly make it a destination.

A lot of Latin American restaurants feel the need to include Mexican food to draw otherwise unsure customers in. For that reason, I am always excited to find ethnic restaurants sticking to their goods. One such restaurant is Peru Chix, basically a hole-in-the-wall type of place in Gardena. Peru Chix has such Peruvian favorites as Lomo Saltado, but I kinda thought chicken would be the way to go.

So I went ahead and ordered half of one. As a combo, which is most likely meant for multiple people, it came with two sides and a drink. I chose the fries and fried plantains, then looked at the pretty Peruvian meal in front of me. The chicken was rotisserie style fully clothed in skin and nicely seasoned. But, like all good Peruvian restaurants, they had some aji sauce to dip all foods in, as well as some sort of house dip. The aji was surprisingly spicy, but delicious.

The sides were pretty damn good too. I always love me plantains and they managed to cook them up with a bit of crisp and none of the oiliness that sometimes accompanies fried plantains. Perhaps best of all, the whole shebang was only 10 bucks. It’s a great deal for some satisfying food.

Allow me to start out by dispelling any possible rumor that I was hungover for my brunch at Snug Harbor. Not only do I have a bizarre immunity to such things, but I wouldn’t want such a thing to bias a review. I should also dispel any rumor that Snug Harbor is anywhere near water or a harbor, as it is not, even though it’s in Santa Monica. I will admit that it is snug and I will further admit that what I ordered was called The Hangover.

Yes, I don’t need to be hungover to appreciate hangover food. And this one was a doozy, beginning with parmesan crusted chicken on top of a gravy-covered biscuit and below a sunny side up egg with hollandaise sauce on it. It also came with home fries.

And let me tell you, this monster of a brunch was pretty awesome. Each ingredient was not only distinct, but matched up well with all the other ingredients. The most difficult thing about it was cutting straight through to get just the right amount of everything.

The meal definitely hit the spot and I’m pretty sure it would live up to its billing and handle just about any hangover that I can think of.

As some of you loyal followers of mine may or may not know, I recently took a stroll to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. The trip included a cook who made some pretty impressive camping food, considering porters were carrying everything. Inevitably, some of the food didn’t fit into my unvegan eating habits, but I ate them anyway, because this was not about eating what I wanted, but about survival in a sense. These were things like cucumber soup, zucchini soup and veggie sauce on pasta. No, they didn’t make we want to eat veggies, but they did hammer home the lesson that hunger truly is the best spice.

There were some highlights though. One day we had some delicious grilled cheeses for lunch. I honestly don’t know what made these grilled cheeses so good. Maybe it was the fact that they were the first cheese I had eaten since arriving in Tanzania. Or maybe it was that they provided a kind of warmth on a cold day that vegetable soup simply couldn’t offer. Or perhaps it was that they were perfectly browned on both sides, the cheese was nice and melty and there is just something awesome about eating grilled cheeses on the side of Kilimanjaro.

Another great meal was “Chips Chicken.” This is basically fries and chicken, and it turns out that this is one of Tanzania’s most popular dishes. I ended up seeing this at just about every local restaurant afterwards and although it may have been quite different down at ground level, the dish definitely pleased us on the mountainside. It was accompanied by some Cole slaw that I avoided, but only because I felt the sugars and protein provided by the rest of the meal could power me up for the remainder of the day.

But nothing beats the final meal of Curried Chicken and Banana Stew. This was another local dish and was served to us on our last day, after coming back down the mountain. In it was half of a chicken from a local village. In the US we call that free range, in Tanzania they simply call that chicken (this is not to say that they don’t have factory farms in Tanzania, I just thinkthose are the chickens they distinguish, rather than the natural ones).What was so interesting about this dish was the use of bananas, which acted as a sort of potato instead of banana. This is because the banana was not yet ripe and not sweet, so it ended up a bit hard and soaked in the flavor of the curry and stew rather than adding a sweet flavor. Essentially, it acted like a potato rather than a banana. Also, I’m sure the stew tasted even better because it marked the end of an epic six-day journey.

The journey was awesome, and I’m glad it gave me an opportunity to try out some interesting new food and local specialties.

In a display of mercy, a work event of mine ended last week at a little Jamaican restaurant in North Hollywood called Coley’s. As it turned out, one of my bosses had been Jamaican all along, but none of us knew it. Yet, Jamaican boss or not, I had been wanting to check out Coley’s for a long time, as it sat in that weird area of town that seemed just a bit far for walking, but too close to hop in a car for.

In any case, work had decided to spot us some drinks and something called “patties.” A patty is essentially the Jamaican version of an empanada, in that it’s a pocket of dough stuffed with meat. The dough takes on a sort of orange tint and the whole thing is fried up, rather than baked. The dough is flaky and pastry-like which provides for a nice contrast of texture with the minced meat inside. Despite showing up to the patty dispensary late to the game, I managed to get myself a beef one and found it was quite delicious. It was spiced to give a bit of a kick, but also had some other great flavors in there. And even better, I couldn’t find one vegetable inside.

While the beer and patty were nice, they would certainly not be enough to get me through the rest of the day. I decided to fend for myself from their regular menu to make myself a full meal. The waitress told me there was a Jerk Chicken lunch special and I figured there could be no better way to test out Jamaican food.

When that eventually came, the plate of food looked like it had come right out of the Caribbean. In addition to the chicken, the plate was loaded with steamed rice, fried plantains, “festival bread” and steamed veggies. I had neglected to notice the veggies on the menu, so I won’t hold them against Coley’s, but I still wasn’t happy that they had been an option. Anyway, I dug into the chicken and found that unique flavor associated with jerk chicken. In the past, I had only eaten jerk chicken in its dry form, but this was served wet and it kept the chicken incredibly moist and tender. It had a mild kick and slightly smokey taste to go along with it. The festival bread was almost like a donut, in that it was fried and light, but wasn’t sweetened. The plantains were also different from any fried plantains I had ever had. In a contrast to the chicken, these were dry and edible by hand. Usually fried plantains can be really sweet, but these were much more relaxed and made a nice addition to the meal.

So this was pretty much a good experience, except that when the bill came I found that I had been charged for the regular portion of Jerk Chicken and not the lunch special. This was no good, and the woman told me that the regular portion was bigger. As I had eaten everything on my plate that didn’t start with v and end with egetable, I wasn’t in a position to complain, but I was still annoyed at paying an extra couple of bucks. I know things were a bit crazy with the sheer number of people there, but my order still should have been correct. If only it had been wrong in a more obvious way that I would have known when it arrived.

Alas, I still recommend Coley’s. I’m not exactly a Jamaican expert, but I can tell a good meal from a bad one. It may not reflect the cooking you may have grown up with if you are a Jamaican, but it is certainly not bad.

And now you may be wondering why an unvegan such as myself would choose to leave sunny Los Angeles for a December weekend foray into the Windy City. With very good reason, in fact, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of my sister’s birth. Yes, it makes me feel old to have a sister so old. But I was delighted at the opportunity to spend a special event with her and a good portion of my family. For the celebration, we headed to a restaurant called Province in downtown Chicago.

Despite the name, this was not a Canadian-themed restaurant as I had hoped. Instead it had a solid Latin American and regular American feel to it. While probably one of the nicest restaurants I had ever been to in Chicago, the prices were still pretty reasonable. A long look at the menu made a few different options pop out, but ultimately I opted for their Chicken as my main course with a bit of Tetilla Fondue to start and split with my sister.

But before the fondue could come, we were brought out a nice spread of round breads and bread-like crispy things. They were accompanied with a sort of white bean dip, which was quite tasty, but I was not going to fill up on such simpletonian food with fondue on the way. The tetilla fondue consisted of melted tetilla cheese with Three Floyds Beer (out of Indiana) and some pretzel bread for dipping. On top of the fondue was a sprinkling of pico de gallo, which would have ordinarily bothered me, but was acceptable as I was sharing my dish. As for the taste, the fondue itself was pretty stellar. I loved the slight taste of beer and the creamy sharpness of the cheese. The pretzel bread, though, was a bit of a letdown. It seemed to be a bit undercooked and was a bit doughy/moist in the middle. Plus, there wasn’t nearly enough of it and we had to dig into the original bread basket to make proper use of the fondue. But while the pretzel bread was a minor disappointment, the greater importance was the cheese itself, which was fondue-licious.

By now you’re probably wondering, “What is this ‘Chicken’ he ordered?” and that is a great question. It wasn’t just any chicken, but chicken topped with honey glaze and mojo-white bbq sauce, with Anson Mills grits forming a nice bed beneath the chicken. On top of that, and unbeknownst to me at the time of ordering, was a cacophony of fried shallots. I wanted nothing to do with these shallots, but fortunately these were fried to such a crisp that they were easy to brush away with a fork. When I got down to the eating, I found myself enjoying a huge, moist breast of chicken. Little of the taste of honey glaze was left, and in its place was a strong smokiness. I enjoyed this smoky flavor, which was also prominent in the grits, but a times it was a bit much. It would have been nice to have some other flavor to offer some more balance, but the chicken was pretty good nonetheless.

Province was a pretty tasty meal, but failed to blow me away. Fortunately, I am told their menu is constantly evolving and for all I know, my chicken no longer graces the pages of their menu and has been replaced with a chicken that will blow your taste buds off your tongue. Restaurants like that are great, and I commend them for being that way. As it were, though, the company at dinner that night was better than anything I could have possibly eaten, and for that I left the restaurant a happy man.

When we first arrived in the Cook Islands, we asked our airport driver where we should go to get a good meal. Hoping to get some sort of local insight, he recommended Trader Jack’s to us. His sentiments agreed with the brief food research we had done before coming to Rarotonga – Trader Jack’s was a must-eat. It took us until day two to get there, but when we got there we found it nicely situated on the shore of the Pacific with a beautiful view of the mountains in the background. And after half a day of hiking those mountains with Pa, it seemed to be just what the doctor ordered.

Trader Jack’s is not simply a restaurant, though. It also has a bar and a pizza parlor, so when we arrived at 5:30, we grabbed a drink at the bar while waiting for the restaurant section to open at 6:00.

When it opened, our beer waitress told us we should get in as quickly as we can to ensure we got a good table. Good tables here meant by the window, which wasn’t actually a window but an open, glassless space overlooking the ocean. Sure, you could see the ocean from other tables, but these were prime and we snagged the last one.

The menu at Trader Jack’s was chock-full of seafood, but after a sandwich of fresh tuna on Pa’s trek, I was eager to see how Trader Jack’s could handle chicken. I ordered the Roast Chicken, but we started out by sharing an appetizer of cheesy pizza bread.

And let me be the first to tell you that the pizza bread was amazing. The cheese on top was melted down and nicely browned and had a flavor similar to how I remember saganaki (that Greek cheese that restaurants like to set on fire). Perhaps this was only due to the taste of the browning, but whatever the reason, it was awesome. Under the cheese was a nice layer of herbs and garlic, which were good, but did not overpower the taste of the cheese. Finally, under that layer was delicious, crispy flatbread. It was a great start to the meal.

But the real king of the meal came with my main course. My roast chicken was served on mash, with creamed rukau, stuffing and herb gravy. Okay, so the menu lied a little bit and stuffing was nowhere to be seen, but they more than made up for it with the size of the chicken and the deliciousness of the mash. And the rukau, for those of you wondering, turned out to be spinach. I avoided this and went to work on the meat and potatoes.

As mentioned before, the chicken was huge, but it also had some great flavor from the gravy. The mash, though, was the highlight. I don’t know the last time I’ve eaten such creamy, buttery mashed potatoes, but I do know that before this meal it had been way too long.

Trader Jack’s was so good, in fact, that it was the only restaurant that merited a return visit during our all-too-short vacation. Sure, the real reason for the return was to meet up with some new friends, but if the food wasn’t good we certainly were ready to drop the friends like a bad habit and try a new place. Good thing this wasn’t the case. And all I will say from that return visit is that if you order pizza and don’t like mayonnaise, be sure to tell your server or you may end up with your weekly intake of condiments on your pizza. It will be pretty, but not so easy to scrape off. But I digress…Trader Jack’s is awesome.

Situated on the grounds of the Crown Beach Resort is a nice, large thatch-roofed building with a restaurant inside. The restaurant is called Windjammer and in the town of Arorangi on the island of Rarotonga, the thatch roof fits right in. As with much of the food I would encounter in Rarotonga (which relies heavily upon imported food from New Zealand), eating out doesn’t come cheaply, with main courses hanging out around 30 New Zealand Dollars. Rather than settling on one dish, the girlfriend and I decided to go splitsies on two.

The first was “Oven baked chicken breast filled with feta, basil and avocado mousse served with warmed roasted local pumpkin, fresh beetroot & asparagus finished with an olive and tomato tapenade.” While, I would typically be asking for vegetable substitutes, I kept the dish as is, which is my custom in foreign countries. When it arrived, I was thankful this was a dish I was splitting. The chicken was pretty small compared to its friends on the plate, but it sure was tasty. The chicken itself was perfectly juicy and feta/basil/avocado stuffing had a creamy texture not usually associated with feta and great taste. Fortunately, the taste was not at all overwhelming and maintained a good balance with the chicken. The vegetables were left to fend for themselves with my girlfriend.

The other dish was “Chefs [sic] special seafood risotto with a selection of fresh sauteed seafood, shell fish then scented with vanilla, citrus and fresh herbs & capped off with a homemade basil dressing.” And it was with this dish that I rapidly fell in love with the seafood of Rarotonga. It was so damn fresh, but it wasn’t just the freshness that did it for me. The sauce it was in was also pretty amazing. I always have a soft spot for vanilla, but would never think to use it with seafood (or any other non-dessert food at that), but Windjammer made it work like a charm. I think it could have used a little more salt to balance out the vanilla, but it is always better to be under-salted than over.

Windjammer was a great introduction to the delicious seafood of Rarotonga and one of the few times in my life where I preferred a dish from the sea over one from the land/air. For anyone staying in the town of Arorangi, Windjammer is not to be missed.